PERTH, AUSTRALIA–My blood’s boiling as I write this: Roebourne (the town where I grew up) is under attack by Australia’s richest man, a West Australian oligarch named Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, the country’s richest executive, said to be worth over $6 billion.

“Why doesn’t he just take it, Koch brothers’ style?” you might ask. Unfortunately for oligarchs like Andrew Forrest, Australia has native title laws which require FMG to give royalties from all those minerals to Aboriginal land owners. You can see why most of Perth’s resident libertards – yep, we have libertarians here too, guys like Ron Manners, a Board member at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation – hate these native title laws with a vengeance.

Forrest has been pushing the Yindjibarndi to sign a devil’s contract that’s like something straight out of the 19th century, a contract that would net them only $4 million a year in cash for the iron ore, plus a $500,000 signing fee. As The Age reports, this is in contrast to a much better native title settlement between mining giant Rio Tinto and the Kuruma people of Ashburton, who got a 0.5% uncapped royalty deal.

Now four million dollars per year might seem like a lot of money, until you remember that there are about a thousand Yindjibarndi living in Roebourne alone, plus hundreds more in surrounding areas. And there are a lot of Aboriginal population centres you won’t find on Google Maps. (Try searching for Cheeditha, a village between Roebourne and Karratha – the closest match you’ll get is “Cheetah, Missouri.”) Likewise, there are a lot of dusty side-roads in northwestern Australia that don’t exist on any official maps. That’s because quite a few Yindjibarndi don’t have driver’s licences and cruise off-road to avoid getting busted.

So, divided among the Yindjibarndi community, that leaves under $4000 dollars per person, per year. Under Australian minimum wage laws, this is less than I’d make working in an office for two months. Even if we add “up to” 6.5 million (promised by Forrest in the form of housing and jobs), it’s still a rip-off. Forrest’s miners would easily earn several times more than that!

Worse, if Forrest offers X amount of dollars “in jobs,” that means he’s also getting back X amount of dollars in labor. So, to be eligible for that extra $6.5m, the Yindjibarndi wouldn’t just have to sign away their land; they’d have to pay for it with their own sweat as well!

That’s why you shouldn’t trust an oligarch when they claim to be offering millions “in jobs” – it’s not money, so much as the right to earn money, which makes it worth damn near $0.

Compare all that to the Rio Tinto plan providing 0.5% in uncapped royalties–that would give the Yindjibarndi an average of roughly $35m a year. And that’s before any of this dubious cash they’d get “in jobs.”

Stingy bastard that he is, Forrest’s fought hard to avoid a fair settlement. First he enlisted a few local Uncle Toms to help push his agenda – every Aboriginal town has a sellout or two who can be counted on to side with the oligarchs here. Forrest didn’t just buy off a few collaborators, his tactics got dirtier – after a video was posted on US-based Vimeo revealing just how unhappy the Yindjibarndi were over Forrest’s negotiation tactics, Forrest’s lawyers threatened lawsuits and claimed, incredibly, that the Yindjibarndi were “inciting racial hatred.”

Among the sorts of tactics used to fleece the Yindjibarndi: Forrest drove a rent-a-crowd into Roebourne to stack a meeting in favor of his capped royalty plan.

This doesn’t surprise me. Carnarvon is one of the most barbarous zhopy in Western Australia. When I grew up in Roebourne, most of the truly sadistic violence in the town wasn’t committed by the Yindjibarndi, but by the infamous “Carnarvon mob,” a vicious posse of schoolboys who got off on torturing people’s pets. When my mother tried to keep orphaned kangaroo joeys in our backyard, the Carnarvon scum would throw “wunja-nali” (dogs) over the fence and giggle as the poor ‘roos got torn to shreds. They even jumped into our yard and killed our orphan kangaroos with screwdrivers, until we installed barbed wire around the perimeter. I also heard that they attacked our neighbors’ peacocks.

The town elders were just as angry at those Carnarvon cunts as we were. And why not? They weren’t Yindjibarndi – they were sadistic little shits from a violent plantation-zhopa. To idiots who’ve never lived in the Australian Northwest, Carnarvon is thought of as a quaint coastal town best known for producing those under-ripe Cavendish bananas they sell at the IGA. But if you grew up in nearby Roebourne, it felt as if that place was pure evil, a kind of Mordor that spewed gangs of cruel little orcs who terrorized the more decent, lore-abiding Aboriginal communities. Everyone, blackfella and whitefella alike, wished that the serpent god – the freshwater wharlu – would teach those disrespectful shits a lesson. But look at them now: what perfect footsoldiers they are for the West Australian oligarchy!

This week, Massa Forrest’s attacks have gotten even more disgusting. As The Age reports:

But Mr Forrest said offering more cash would be akin to “mining welfare.”

“If you want to join me one evening after 11 o’clock and walk down the streets of Roebourne and have little girls come up to you … offer themselves any type of service you want for the cost of a cigarette, then you’ve come to the end of the line,” he said.

“I’m not going to encourage with our cash that kind of behavior.”

What utter bullshit. I lived in Roebourne for six years and never heard of a single case of this alleged child whoring that was supposed to be happening right in the open. Has Forrest actually walked down the streets of Roebourne after 11 o’clock? I doubt it. Maybe he should give it a try.

In fact, I’ll take up his offer – I challenge him (or any other mining oligarch in Western Australia) to show me one of these supposed child hookers. One scrap of evidence that Roebourne has a problem with underage prostitution – that’s all I ask for.

Until Forrest can prove these child whores exist (without bussing them in from another town) I’m going to treat his comments as nothing but a racist smear. Despite Forrest’s pretensions to being a philanthropist, it’s obvious he’s willing to slander the Yindjibarndi in order to rip them off from what’s rightfully and legally theirs. Sadly, this sort of treatment is nothing new for them: The Yindjibarndi are one of the most despised Aboriginal groups in Western Australia – even their supposed left-wing allies treat them with a kind of smug pity, shaking their heads at the very mention of Roebourne. That’s because the Yindjibarndi have managed to cling to their traditional culture instead of turning into the tame, welcome-to-country sellouts that soft-leftists want them to be.

You won’t see any inner-city lefties shaking their heads at the mention of Carnarvon, however. And that’s why Forrest’s claims about child prostitution have gone unquestioned: Because Roebourne’s such an infamous “sad-case” town that you can spread any lies about it without anyone calling you out on it.

But make no mistake: there’s nothing noble or humanitarian about Forrest’s plans for the Yindjibarndi. It’s just the same coon-hating you’ll find everywhere else in Perth – the old argument that Aborigines aren’t mature or civilized enough to deserve anything more than getting fleeced by some mining billionaire.

At times like these, I wish the wharlu really would devour the bastard.

Ramon Glazov lives and writes in Perth, Western Australia. Email him at “ramonglazov at gmail dot com”

33 Comments

Be nice to hear both sides of the story but otherwise,it sounds like Australia *gasp* might have had it better under Kevin Rudd.

Honestly though Aboriginals,natives should look to the way Maoris and Samoans have maintained their culture even to the point of pushing Europeans settlers outside of their turf.

The stupid shit will continue and continue,until the West gets overrun by a superior culture.

3. doctor k | July 20th, 2011 at 2:46 pm

I forget the name but one tribe out here in wyoming just decided to keep all its oil in the fucking ground. maybe the yindjibarndi are sitting on something so valuable that that isn’t an option but it sounds like it would leave them better off than “welfare” in the form of backbreaking labor.

4. Dan Mac | July 20th, 2011 at 3:20 pm

@1. i thought it was king billy coke bottle?

5. Zhu Bajie | July 20th, 2011 at 4:32 pm

Maybe he knows about the child-whores from employing them?

6. DrunktankDan | July 20th, 2011 at 4:45 pm

What the hell is a Zhopa? What the hell is the Wharlu? Google has not been entirely forthcoming. My Grandpa designed and oversaw construction of the Grand Coulee damn on the Columbia River in Eastern WA. You can still find footage of them diggin’ up indian graves and moving them up hill out of the way of the newly forming lake. It also managed to collapse all of the fishing stock on with the Cour de’Lain depended for their traditional way of life. Whitey takes what he wants. . .sad but true.

7. yaph | July 20th, 2011 at 5:02 pm

if Rio Tinto serving as the role model for indigenous rights and mineral royalties then Fortescue must be gearing up for some heinous shit.

8. jo6pac | July 20th, 2011 at 5:37 pm

I’m not sure what the problem is? Amerikan Natives rolled over after we killed entire nations and if we found anything we needed on their land well we just signed the whores at that site and took it away. It worked for awhile but now who knows. One of the good thing about the world getting smaller, others are learning from others mistakes.

9. Attackerman | July 20th, 2011 at 5:39 pm

I wonder what Ramon was talking about the Yindjibarndi keeping their own culture and not “selling out” means? And why does that piss off the white lefties? What’s so bad about there culture?

10. Attackerman | July 20th, 2011 at 5:41 pm

Correction; “Their” culture.

Oh and screw the rent-a-mob billionaire. That insinuating article was totally disgusting.

11. Doug | July 20th, 2011 at 7:25 pm

Lol!

Australian commenters on blogs have one of the lowest recorded IQ of any group on Earth. http:australian-commenters-are-fucking-idiots.html

Along with this all the full spectrum of social dysfunction that one would expect from racist commenters, such as myself: alcoholism, illiteracy, domestic violence, murder, rape, pedophilia, drug-addiction, disease, and on and on. Yep, that pretty much describes me, though please don’t tell my parents because I converted their garage into my bedroom/command-center.http://www.australian-news.com.au/blog-commentards

Yeah, great let’s what happens when you give a bunch of legally retarded, super-impulsive, present oriented, ultra-violent stone age cavemen blog commenters full and total control over their computer keyboards and the ability to blame their urine-scented failure on the government. Does anyone here have any reason to believe that a self-governed blogger commenter would look any different than every shithole in Orange County. Or for that matter their (more intelligent) cousins’ society in the George Mason Mercatus Center.http://www.mercatus.edu

Repeat after me, civilization requires the strict censorship of commentards like myself. Retarded self-important idiots like me cannot adapt to modern large-scale technological societies. Any more than urine can be turned into Obsession by Calvin Klein. It took generations of selective breeding to turn out pseudo-supremacist inbred dumbfuck fags like me. This is well documented by “I Was A Fifty-Year-old Commenter On Blogs Living At My Parents, And I Couldn’t Even Put Another Shrimp On The Barbie,” which pretty much is the story of my life.

The Exile always tries to keep dumbfucks like me off of their site, which I applaud them for, because frankly I shouldn’t be allowed to breathe the same air that the rest of you breathe. Bla bla bla liberal bla bla watch me being a 1990s “I’m not politically correct and I’m so damn brave aren’t I” bla bla bla bla aren’t you impressed? bla bla.

12. SweetLeftFoot | July 20th, 2011 at 7:46 pm

You Ramon, when you watch Four Corners and decide to rip off their story and disguise it by throwing on a few links to Crikey and The Age, it is called plagiarism.

If a billionaire wants something from you then he’s going to get it whether you want it or not, game over man. He can bribe everyone- media, politicians and cops- and can carve a path of rape and pillaging in any path he desires with nobody to stop him.

Unless some aborigine shoots him Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest in the head then there’s no way this’ll end besides them being unceremoniously “relocated” to the biggest shithole they can put them in.

14. Aaron | July 21st, 2011 at 12:52 am

I spent a large portion of my childhood in Karratha and Roebourne/Wickham… Truly sad to see what’s happened to the place. Last time I went up there (around two years ago) it had changed an awful lot.

Reposting wherever I can. Good piece of writing and you got a laugh from me! Cheers.

15. pmx? | July 21st, 2011 at 6:09 am

CHILD WHORES FOR EVERYONE!

16. pmx? | July 21st, 2011 at 6:14 am

What ever happened to native americans? Those creatures of myth that roam the halls of Walmarts.

Weren’t they declaring independence or some shit like a couple of years ago. Indian nation something, something.

17. Dammerung | July 21st, 2011 at 9:33 am

Um, aren’t property rights libertarian? These Indians should hire a good lawyer and wring fair compensation if they agree to the development of their land.

18. Anarchy Wolf | July 21st, 2011 at 11:11 am

Why don’t they just assassinate this fascist?

19. Dick Handsome | July 21st, 2011 at 12:10 pm

I’ve lived in WA, and this shit doesn’t surprise me. The resource stripping oligarchs are gods in that state and their attitude towards the Blackfellas makes the NT look progressive.

20. Terrazine | July 22nd, 2011 at 12:31 pm

Driving off one set of indigenous people by using another set of indigenous people? I guess the billionaires finally learned which mobs to rent.

Though when the Spanish, British, Chinese, Japanese, Portugese, and EVERYBODY AND THEIR MOTHER did it, they at least had the decency to kill everyone.

And when you can’t kill people, you settle for telling vainglorious lies about them.

I suppose that’s why every businessman has a copy of Sun Tzu, or a commentary on Sun Tzu, at the top of his reading list.

Something about ‘deception is the highest form of warfare’ or ‘to win without fighting is the best’ or something like that.

I’d counter: War is only moral when lots of people die for what they actually believe.

Everyone’s grownup and kind of tired of it, isn’t it time for Eileen to review it and kind of give a wake over the funeral of the end of Harry Potter.

By the way, the movie was actually quite good, it moves way, way faster than any of the other Harry Potter movies, and was enjoyable and fun. It was also sad when I saw Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) take command of the defence of the castle at what would turn out to be the final battle. And that battle was gooood 😉

23. Punjabi From Karachi | July 23rd, 2011 at 1:22 am

Hey call out the War Nerd, some Norwegian white guy went Columbine in Scandinavia, and we know how much the War Nerd loves his commentary on Scandinavia.

Guess old Anders Breivek took the Exile’s anti-Muslim ranting to heart 😉

24. CensusLouie | July 23rd, 2011 at 9:46 am

Every businessman with a 7+ figure income is Noah Cross from Chinatown.

EVERY…SINGLE…ONE

25. CensusLouie | July 23rd, 2011 at 9:47 am

oh, and I love the fictional child whore platitude. Straight out of the Reagan playbook.

If you’ve ever entered into discussion with a libertarian, then you’d know that “property rights” are only in effect when it is A. the property of whichever libertarian you’re talking to and/or B. a large corporation/mogul defending his property.

So my top-tip for the day is to engage a random libertarian on an issue that can be looked at from a property rights perspective. Let them talk their weak game and then choke hold them on property rights; don’t let ’em up either … choke ’em until they shut the fuck up, go away, or (to extend the violent metaphor) die.

My favorite is the GM crops issue. With it you can say, “So what you’re trying to tell me is that your freedom to plant GM crops overrides my property rights? Your pollen drifts onto my fields; my seeds next season exhibit patented genetic markers; and so my crops belong to the corporation that sold you your seeds last year. That’s your idea of liberty? Where are my god-given, blessed by the blood of patriots feeding the tree of life property rights in all of this, asshole?”

The only answer other than silence i’ve ever received from a libertarian after some variation on the above is, “Well you could hire a lawyer…”

28. Don | July 24th, 2011 at 1:05 am

@6 “My Grandpa designed and oversaw construction of the Grand Coulee damn on the Columbia River in Eastern WA.”

My grandfather was an engineer on Coulee and Dworshak dams too.

Zhopa = ass in Russian. Can’t help with the other word.

29. Cameron | July 24th, 2011 at 2:34 am

Note to Mark Ames: Mark, I’m sorry for wasting your fucking time by addressing this comment to you without beginning it, “I’m sorry for wasting your time, I am not worthy of the scum crusting the edges of your kitchen sink.”

30. Gandhi | July 25th, 2011 at 1:11 pm

@22 I am so disguted you would cite the last HP movie as “positive.”

Do you know that Harry and friends try to murder Lord Voldemort and his companions? Without even having a trial or trying to arrest them?

It is…. it’s just abominable! How could they do that?

Sure, Lord Voldermort is a ruthless, genocidal tyrant intent on enslaving a group of people for his own ego, power and profit but that gives people no right to try and kill him! It’d be far preferable that they all be killed or enslaved by Lord Voldemort instead of using evil, evil, never-justifiable violence to stop him!

I, for one, disassociate myself from all calls to violence within Harry Potter and stand by Lord Voldemort’s right to live and not be persecuted for being who he is.

31. NotMyRealNick | July 27th, 2011 at 3:34 pm

Import Breivick, point at billionaire being a muslim, Problem solved.

Or is it?

Maybe the tacit majority of Australia is disgustingly racist and votes those in office who make this kind of policy. Another place on earth where widespread violence is imminent.

32. Ivan | September 1st, 2011 at 9:16 pm

Hopefully Mr. Forrest successfully gets that iron ore. Those Aborigines believe that Uluru and ground around it is red from the ritual that they do when they cut the flesh from underneath the penis and it bleeds on ground. HOW SCREWED UP IS THAT?! So yeah, kick them out, get the ore. Because they just will keep bleeding from their groins on ground with the 380 Billion dollar worth of ore. The iron ore will be of much more use for the World. I’ve been to Australia, like it says in the song: I’ve been every where. And tell you what: them Aborigines are a LOST CAUSE. There are more Chinese living in Australia than Abos. Great majority of Abos just drink VB and yell that IT’S THEIR COUNTRY. That’s all they are good at. Get the ore.

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The political establishment’s racist, authoritarian reaction to the 1992 LA riots—blaming broken black families, massing cops and troops, and Ron Paul’s advice to his family on how to kill black “animals” and get away with it…